Soledad O’Brien sits on the side of the road of the West Side Highway taking media calls, like this one, on her drive home. Six days of red eyes crisscrossing the United States, from Miami to San Francisco, to promote her new documentary, “The War Comes Home,” airing Aug. 12 on CNN, hasn’t made a dent in her energy. She even sounds chipper.

Since her San Francisco reporter days at KRON in the early 1990s to leaving the anchor chair at CNN a little more than a year ago, O’Brien is still a master storyteller. The switch from anchor to CEO of her own production company, Starfish Media Group, had been been a move she’d been pondering for a few years, she says. The overlap obvious: Making a vision a reality.

We chat about what it’s like to be a CEO and balance family, why it’s still relevant to talk about women in the workplace and how she lives out of a carry-on bag.

Q: I was scrolling through your tweets, and you’ve been everywhere this past week. How do you manage to live out of your suitcase?

A: Wear black, bring two different pairs of high-heel shoes, black jackets, black slacks, black dresses, black shirts, and then you mix and match — it’s very Donna Karan 1980s. … I only do carry-on. I absolutely minimize the stuff I’m hauling through. I actually bring a lot of paperwork, a lot articles to read, a lot of magazines. … And every so often you do have to run to Old Navy to get something because you forgot to pack it.

Q: Your company just celebrated its one year anniversary, congratulations! What was the highest point and the lowest point for you?

A: Coming from being a journalist who’s a CEO now, I think the highest point is when you start getting into production, that’s always the best, and the fact we’re really busy and getting our hands dirty doing the work is always the most comfortable position for me to be in. For some of the lowest points, we haven’t had any really major low points. I think the biggest challenge has been all the other stuff that comes with being CEO, which is figuring out the team to hire and assemble, getting office space and studio space — all these things that come with running a company.

Q: Of all the career moves you could have chosen, why did you pick production company CEO?

A: I had been thinking about it for a couple of years actually before I was able to really take advantage of the opportunity. I had always liked telling stories that I liked to tell. I think there’s a lot of overlap between an anchor and being a CEO, in terms of vision when you’re anchoring, the tone of the show and the direction is pretty much in your voice, and the same thing when you’re CEO. You have a vision, and you hope that you can gather a team that can execute that vision.

Q: What do you think of what Max Schireson said about stepping down as CEO of MongoDB?

A: The other day when that story broke, I sent it to my husband because that’s a conversation that he and I have all the time, right? What made it an interesting story was that it was a male CEO who was saying that I can’t manage my family and this job. It’s just not doable at this high level that I expect it to be done.

Q: He said no one in the media asked him about work-life balance or about being a dad and husband, unlike female CEOs. They’re getting asked that all the time, Marissa Mayer at Yahoo or Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook. Why are we still talking about women in the workplace?

A: I think it’s a relevant question, and I think the answer is not to not ask the women. I think what the answer is and what this guy is saying is ask the guys, too. It’s a relevant question. I’m asked that all the time by young women — you have four children, travel and do your job. I just flew in on a red eye just a couple hours ago. It’s hard. So it’s not like, wow, that’s a completely irrelevant question for me. It’s not. It’s a relevant question. And now the good news is, is that it’s a relevant question for everybody.

Q: How do you pick the documentaries or the subjects that you cover? Your latest, “The War Comes Homes,” is about veterans, PTSD and suicide.

A: I think our organizing concept behind our company has been telling those untold stories that fall into the cracks, because they’re not the story that everybody else chasing. … I think that’s very true in this particular case as well.

We talk a lot about that 22 number — 22 veterans a day are killing themselves — but very rarely do you get a very deep dive, and a very personal dive, into who are these guys? Who are the people who are thinking about killing themselves and why? What are their stories exactly, and what are their lives like? …

It’s really about: Can we tell that deeply personal, connected story? And the way we go about doing it is you just go and find really good stories. It always has to start with a really good idea and then a lot of access. If you can combine those two things, you can have a really terrific documentary. The veterans were so generous with their time, so generous with their the access. They were so honest about things that were very difficult, sometimes embarrassing, the things they’ve been ashamed of. They were so amazingly forthcoming. I think it’s this kind of honesty that makes this doc great.